Go More Slowly Over The Earth

celebrating midsummer and reconsidering the middle ages

June 21 - July 16, 2023

Go More Slowly Over The Earth celebrates midsummer and reconsiders the Middle Ages with opening festivities on the summer solstice. An early, intimate feast of spit-roasted meat and dandelion wine evolves into a public evening of contemporary works and timeless traditions. Featured artworks and design objects include sculpture, furniture, lighting, paintings, jewelry, and explorations in material and alchemy — they employ methods of making, meaning, ornamentation, utility, and protection common during the Middle Ages.

Includes works by Stephanie Barlow, Loran Bohall, Phil Cecil, Rachel Leah Cohn, Angela Eastman, Devon Gray, Max McInnis, Aaron Leif Nicholson, Rebekah Nolan, Cory Robinson, and Sean Starowitz, with Lauren Day, Grace Seibert, Marlowe Harp, Tuning Forks, and Nowhere Chai.

The opening reception coincides with various summer solstice celebrations at COMPANION. Guests are invited to observe and participate in on-site metal casting, candle making, amulet assemblage, and altar building. Items made during opening night can be left for install as part of the exhibition’s document of the celebration. On view through Sunday, July 16th.

Opening Reception & Summer Solstice Celebrations
Wednesday, June 21st | 8 - 11:30pm

Divine Office | Dinner & Drinks with Grace Seibert & Marlowe Harp accompanied by Tuning Forks
Wednesday, June 21st | 5:30 - 7:30pm
Reserve Your Seat - sold out

Crude Cuttlefish Casting | Two-Part Workshop
Saturday, June 17th | 1 - 5pm
Wednesday, June 21st | 8 - 10pm

Closing Reception
Sunday, July 16th | 1 - 4pm

The project borrows its title from a contemporary translation of a line in the late 10th century Old English Metrical Calendar (historically the Menologium) written by a monk and scholar named Byrhtferth. The poem charts the cycle of the solar / natural year and the major universal feasts widely observed in late Anglo-Saxon England. It is written from a domestic perspective and believed to have been a practical, didactic way to understand the annual cycle and interrelationships of feasts, festivals, solar turning points, seasons, and months. 

Old English Metrical Calendar by Byrhtferth:

                                    Þænne monað bringð
ymb twa and feower     tiida lange,
Ærra Liða,    us to tune,
Iunius on geard,     on þam gim astihð
on heofenas up     hyhst on geare,
tungla torhtast,     and of tille agrynt, |
to sete sigeð.     Wyle syððan leng
grund behealdan     and gangan lator
ofer foldan wang     fægerust l[e]ohta, 
woruldgesceafta.
. . .
                            We þa tiid healdað 
on midne sumor     mycles on æþelum.

Translation by Kazutomo Karasawa:

Then after two and four days, the (next) month, Ærra Liða, June, brings long (daytime) hours to town, to our enclosure, during which the gem, the brightest of stars, ascends into heaven above, highest in the year, and descends from its standing-place, sinks to its setting. Then the fairest of lights and of things in this world wishes to behold the ground longer and go more slowly over the earth. . . . We celebrate the feast with great respect at the summer solstice.